Climate scientists set sail to explore changing Arctic Ocean

A new £10 million research programme to investigate how the Arctic Ocean is changing has launched its first cruise to the Barents Sea.

The Changing Arctic Oceans research programme aims to generate a better
understanding of the Arctic so models
can more accurately predict future change to the environment and the ecosystem.

Over 20 scientists from 16
UK research institutes, including the University of Leeds, have joined forces
to understand the knock-on effects of rapid warming and sea ice loss in the
Arctic region.

Dr Christian März, from the School
of Earth and Environment
is the leader of the Changing Arctic Ocean Seafloor (ChAOS) project 
one of four projects covering
different aspects of the research programmes goals. He said: Our ChAOS project will focus
on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, the seafloor, which is by no means the
boring, dark environment it might be perceived as.

It is, in fact, a complex
ecosystem teeming with life, and it plays an extremely important role in Arctic
biodiversity, food webs, the recycling of nutrients back into the overlying
water, and the long-term burial of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as dead
organic material. Our ChAOS team will, without doubt, have the muddiest job on
the expedition, but someone needs to do it  and we love it.

Some of the clearest signs of
change are the thinning and retreat of sea ice and the migration of species
into the Arctic that normally live at lower latitudes. As the fastest warming
oceanic region in the world, the Arctic could be free of sea ice in summer
within a few decades. These changes are likely to have an unprecedented impact
on how the Arctic ecosystem operates.

Robotic underwater vehicles will
also be deployed to collect data near the edge of the sea ice. Hundreds of
litres of seawater will be filtered to capture phytoplankton, and special
plankton nets will capture zooplankton, small animals that are an essential
food source in the Arctic.

Dr Jo Hopkins, from the National
Oceanography Centre and Principal Scientific Officer on the ship, said: This
is an exciting and ambitious first cruise that will collect a vast amount of
information about Arctic water and sediments and the life that they support.
Improving our understanding of how the Arctic ecosystem functions today will
help us better predict and manage how it may change in the future.

The lead investigators for the Changing
Arctic Oceans research programme are the University of Leeds, the Scottish
Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Liverpool.

The four projects covering
different aspects of the programmes goals are:

The way
change in the Arctic is affecting the food chain, from small organisms at the
bottom to large predators at the top (ARISE),

How warming
influences the single main food source at the bottom of the food chain
(DIAPOD),

The
effect of retreating and thinning sea ice on nutrients and sea life in the
surface ocean (Arctic PRIZE),

and on
the ecosystem at the seafloor (ChAOS).

The UK scientists will contribute
to international efforts to build a comprehensive picture of the constantly
changing Arctic environment. They will look at a wide range of complex
interactions between different organisms in the ocean and at the seafloor.

Further
information

Image credit: The Royal Research Ship James Clark
Ross (Credit: British Antarctic
Survey)